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Extensional Rheology and Stability of Gas Cell Walls in Bread Doughs at Elevated Temperatures in Relation to Breadmaking Performance

¹School of Food Biosciences, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AP, UK. ²Corresponding author. E-mail: b.dobraszczyk@reading.ac.uk. ³Stable Micro Systems Ltd., Vienna Court, Godalming, Surrey, UK. ⁴Weston Research Laboratories Ltd., Maidenhead, UK. ⁵Tate & Lyle, Amylum Europe N.V., Aalst, Belgium.

The rheological properties of gas cell walls in bread doughs are considered to be important in relation to their stability and gas retention during proof and baking. Large deformation rheological properties of gas cell walls were measured using biaxial extension for a number of doughs of varying breadmaking quality at constant strain rate and elevated temperatures of 25–60°C. Strain hardening and failure strain of cell walls both decreased with temperature, with cell walls in good breadmaking doughs remaining stable and retaining their strain hardening properties at higher temperatures (60°C), while the cell walls of poor breadmaking doughs became unstable at lower temperatures (45–50°C) and had lower strain hardening. Strain hardening measured at 50°C gave good correlations with baking volume, with the best correlations achieved between rheological measurements and baking tests that used similar mixing conditions. As predicted by the Considere failure criterion, a strain hardening value of 1 defines a region below which gas cell walls become unstable, and discriminates well between the baking quality of a range of commercial flour blends of varying quality. This indicates that the stability of gas cell walls during baking is strongly related to strain hardening properties, and that extensional rheological measurements can be used as indicators of baking quality.